


Knock-Knock, Agent Washington

by ThinkoftheWindandSun



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Blood, Knock-Knock Jokes, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 04:40:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6940174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThinkoftheWindandSun/pseuds/ThinkoftheWindandSun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s been through the motions so many times he’s not sure how they still manage to surprise him. How the deaths still hurt every time. But seeing them fall, seeing them bloodied and beaten and dead never stops hurting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knock-Knock, Agent Washington

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I am ridiculously fond of time loops. I love time loops. And I figure Wyoming's kind of the perfect excuse for time loops. So here it is. I don't know why I chose Wash as the one trapped, but I did and I don't regret it.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not, nor have I ever, owned the Red vs Blue show or its characters or original plot line. Nor do I have any ownership or involvement in the Halo video game from which it was devised. There is no monetary compensation for this work, or any other works I have posted.

“I have a… joke you have to hear,” Wyoming says through bubbling blood. The visor of his helmet is completely smashed and Wash can just make out pale skin and a blood-stained mouth through it. The normally perfectly groomed moustache is stained red at the tips and sparkles with broken pieces of his helmet’s visor. It’s a mess, his eyes pinched closed with pain.  
Wash presses his hands to the biggest wound and pushes down hard. There’s no more bio-foam. His breath is almost more shaky than Wyoming’s, more panicked than in pain. His gauntlets are slick with blood and slide against the armour beneath him. His eyes are burning.  
“Shut up,” Wash says, desperately.  
Wyoming’s lips pull into a smile. One of his hands moves, pressed something hard into Wash’s thigh. He glances down. Frowns at the sight of Wyoming’s time displacement unit. When it’s pushed against his thigh more insistently he reaches out one hand to take hold of it. Wyoming makes a noise that might have been a cheer of victory if it wasn’t choked with blood.  
“Knock, knock,” Wyoming says.  
The unit activates in a burst of green-tinged light.

“Wash, look out!” York shouts.  
He does. Probably not in the way York expects, because he’s learned from the loops that some things have to happen.  
So when the warthog comes tearing towards him he doesn’t roll out of the way. Doesn’t dodge it. Instead he twists to lessen the impact and lets it hit him. There’s screaming from the radio, curses and someone’s shouting for an update, and he ignores it.  
Focuses on gritting his teeth and clinging on to the warthog. Hooks his fingertips into grooves on the hood and pulls. Gets himself balanced half on the hood and half on the tusk-like hooks on the front. One knee on the hood he lifts his rifle and points it at the gunner. Fires.  
The gunner goes down before he can move. Wash turns his gun to the passenger and fires again. The windshield shatters under the assault. Bullets tear into the passenger’s torso and make him scream. He writhes and falls from the vehicle. Curses are pouring from the driver’s mouth as he pulls the warthog into a sharp turn. Wash tugs a grenade from his hip, meets the driver’s eye through his visor, and throws it.  
He lets the momentum of the turn, so sharp the warthog teeters precariously on two wheels for a moment, take him and lets go. Lands in a roll and comes up in a crouch. Rifle already raised to take down the two soldiers bearing down on him from the east. Behind him the grenade goes off and the warthog gives a second explosion seconds after. He lets his body rock forward with the force of them and scans for more enemies.  
Catches sight of several red dots approaching on his radar and makes for cover. His bruised ribs protest. There’s something wet and hot -- blood -- running down his arm beneath his undersuit.  
His back hits the rubble he ducks behind just as bullets come tearing through the air above him. Panting, he tips his head back and closes his eyes. Takes the chance to centre himself. Then he opens his eyes and flicks another glance at the radar. The red dots are spread in a semi-circle on the far side of the exploded vehicle.  
“--ort, Wash!” Carolina shouts through the radio.  
He belatedly remembers that the others have no idea what’s going on, except York. A look around shows York crouched behind some rubble of his own a few feet away. His visor is pointed squarely at Wash.  
He licks his lips.  
“Sorry,” he says surprisingly evenly, “there was a car.”  
“Holy fuck,” says York.  
Wash chances a look over the rubble and ducks back down when their enemies immediately take the chance to fire. He noses his rifle over the edge and fires blindly, hoping to hit something. There’s a bitten off curse that suggest he does, but nothing else. He pulls his gun back to his chest to conserve bullets.  
“Where the fuck did you get a grenade? Who gave the rookie grenades?” York demands.  
“We’re pinned down. At least eight hostiles. North, can you see them?” Wash asks, ignoring York’s questions.  
He already knows the answer; it’s not the first time he’s had this scenario play out. Still, depending on how long it takes him to disable the warthog the number of reinforcements changes. The lowest he’s seen is eight. The highest is sixteen. He tries to shoot for the lower end of the scale, but apparently there’s a bit of an art to taking a hit from a warthog without serious internal damage. At least this time all of his limbs are functioning and there’s no blood in his lungs. Hell, he thinks he might even have survived with his ribs mostly intact for once.  
There’s still blood soaking his undersuit. He should seal the wound with bio-foam, but he can’t risk using it on something small. It’s vital that he have bio-foam when they reach the interior of the building.  
“I count nine hostiles surrounding your current position. I can take out four before they notice me, but after that there’s no guarantees,” North reports.  
“Right,” Wash says.  
It’s almost always four. Once it was five, and twice it’s been three. The time he couldn’t take out any was bad. Wash tries not to think about that one, because he had been bleeding into his lungs at the time and the memory is enough to make him panic.  
As much as he wants to stick behind the rubble and rest his aching body, give himself a chance to breathe just for a moment, he knows that they might have taken to long already. There’s a strict timeline they have to follow if they want to make it out alive and Wash is the only one that knows it.  
He shifts positions, gets his legs under him, and breathes out. Says, “On three.”  
“What? Wash you can’t just--” York protests loudly.  
“One.”  
“You were hit by a car!”  
“Two.”  
“You can’t walk that off!”  
“Three.”  
“Wash, what’s he talking about?” Carolina asks, cold and commanding. There’s concern creeping into the edge of her voice. “York, status report.”  
Wash watches his radar. Two dots are already gone. A third disappears as he watches. North’s working steadily despite the distraction their teammates are providing over the radio. He’s kind of impressed even though it happens every time. North may be jokingly called the ‘mom’ of the team, but when it comes down to it he’s stone cold and gets things done.  
“A fucking warthog just ran the rookie down. He shouldn’t be moving, or fighting,” York says loudly into the radio.  
There’s a long moment of silence.  
Wash watches a fourth dot disappear.  
He hefts his rifle, nods to York, and rockets to his feet.  
There’ll be time to gossip later, if they make it through.

He presses his hands to Wyoming’s stomach and ignores the tears on his cheeks.  
“I have a… joke for you,” Wyoming says.  
Wash presses harder, ignores the flashing timer, and asks, “Who’s there?”

South doesn’t hesitate.  
She presses her back to his and levels her shotgun at the soldiers surrounding them. Asks, “How long?”  
Wash doesn’t look at his timer, knows it’s not about that. His pistol is steady in his hands, rifle empty on his back. There’s blood soaking his armour up to his knees and mud caked into the elbows. The radio hisses static into his ear where the others’ voices should be.  
“Long enough,” he says.  
Her back is solid against his. It’s more real than anything else around him except the static in his ears. He’s lived it so many times he’s not sure what’s real anymore beyond South. Because she’s got his back and she’s as solid as anything else.

“I’ve got, I’ve got a really funny one,” Wyoming slurs. “Knock, knock.”  
Wash is tired.  
He’s so damn tired.  
“Who’s there?” He asks.  
“Two.”  
“Two who?”  
“Two who’s day,” Wyoming says.  
Wash laughs a little desperately and presses his helmet against Wyoming’s chest plate. His gauntlets are slick with blood when the time displacement unit is pushed into them. They both pretend he’s not crying.

He knows none of them will believe him, has learned it the hard way, so he holds his tongue on the words that want to burst free and watches them disembark. Hangs back a moment to set the timer. The numbers almost feel like a part of him now, like they’ve been engraved into his soul.  
“You’re quiet Rookie,” York jeers, “Nervous?”  
Wash smiles inside his helmet. It’s as grim as the numbers ticking down their deaths. “Should I be?”  
There must be something in his voice because the others turn to look at him. He ignores them and steps off the pelican. Turns around to watch it go because he even if he knows he’ll see it again before too long it still feels horribly final. When he turns around again the others are still staring. Waiting. He stares back, trying not to feel like he should be spilling his guts to them.  
“Fuck it,” South mutters.  
She stalks off, knocking shoulders with Carolina as she goes. The others follow shortly after. Wash falls into step next to York. Wyoming tilts his helmet.  
“Anyone want to hear a joke?” He asks.  
Wash doesn’t.

“Knock, knock,” says Wyoming.  
“Who’s there?” Asks Wash.  
A grenade rolls to their feet.  
“The punchline,” Wyoming says dryly.

Their shoulders are pressed together where they crouch in the shadows, it should be awkward, but Wash is too tired for that. Carolina doesn’t mention it either way. She’s tense in the way he’s learned to mean there’s impending violence. He wonders if she can pick up something similar in his own body language.  
Over the radio they can hear York singing off-key as he works on picking the holo-lock. South and North are bickering quietly on a separate channel -- after Carolina ordered them off the main one when things started getting personal. Wyoming is humming along to York’s song.  
It’s the closest he’s felt to relaxed since this whole thing started. Since that damned time unit was shoved into his hands, and he’s thankful for it. Then York lets out a particularly awful round of lyrics, the door slides open, and it’s over.  
He enters the room two steps behind Carolina.  
Gunfire greets them.

“Knock, knock.”  
Wash’s fingers close around the time displacement unit Wyoming shoves at him. Both of them are panting and covered in blood. One of them is crying, and he thinks it might not be him.  
“Fuck you.”

“I must say,” Wyoming muses, “you make a fantastic nurse, Agent Washington.”  
Wash snorts and removes the bio-foam pen from South’s freshly sealed wound. She makes an irritable sound and swats him away. He raises his hands placatingly and moves back. Turns his attention to the shattered visor through which he can see Wyoming’s face.  
“What do you know about nurses?” He asks.  
“They’re professionals,” Wyoming decides.  
South’s laugh is ugly as she pushes to her feet. Wyoming offers her a hand to help and she bats at it. Over the radio North is laughing. Wash rolls his eyes and stuffs the half-empty pen back into his suit. It’ll be necessary later.  
He rubs half-heartedly at a bit of mud crusted to his knee plate as he rises. His ears are tuned to the radio, waiting. He knows this path better than most. Knows that he took too long with the warthog, that he’s already doomed them. He waits for the explosion with a muted dread, eyes tracking movement on his radar.  
There a strange sort of choking noise at the end of one of North’s chuckles and then his radio falls silent. South goes stock still, impossibly tense, and Wash grits his teeth. Wyoming has frozen mid-step.  
The scream that tears from South’s throat is a horrible sound. All sharp edges and raw emotion. She claws at her chest plate and begs into the radio, howls North’s name for all she’s worth. At some point his pre-Freelancer name slips out. Sometime around when she folds in half like all the air’s been knocked out of her. Wash and Wyoming step forward to catch her. Wyoming holds her around the waist and Wash catches her wrists when she starts getting violent. She’s screaming and crying and he can’t see through her visor but he knows there must be tears.  
She collapses in on herself sobbing.

“Knock, knock,” Wyoming says through a mouthful of blood.  
“Who’s there?” Wash asks.  
There’s no answer beyond the usual flare of light.

The building is six stories tall, with eight sub-basements, and has a gravel coated roof. This is important, because Wash’s escape route of choice is that same roof. Mostly because it’s where Wyoming’s set up his nest and he doesn’t have the time to track down wherever North’s buried himself.  
Also, Wyoming is the whole reason he’s in this mess.  
He takes a corner and skids hard, loses his footing. Catches himself with one hand and scrambles back up. Behind him he hears shouts and pounding feet. His pursuers are gaining on him and he doesn’t have time to waste.  
There’s a ledge up ahead five feet below the edge of the roof, which is where Wyoming has hidden himself. Wash knows for a fact that if he makes a single mistake in the next couple of moments -- if he mistimes a single thing -- he’ll go hurtling to the ground below. It’s a painful death and sometimes he doesn’t die in the exact moment of impact. Not the worst death he’s experienced, but certainly not something he wants to happen again.  
Wyoming looks up, startled, as he drops down over the edge. Even with several attempts at this under his belt, some of them even successful, he still manages to land halfway on top of him. Their legs tangle together and their armour clanks painfully loud. Wyoming makes a wheezing noise as the air is knocked out of him and Wash has to blink stars out of his eyes. Then he grabs Wyoming’s shoulder and pins him to the dirt beneath them.  
Hopes desperately that his pursuers won’t see the slight rustling of the bushes surrounding them from his impact. When no shouts come after two minutes he breathes a sigh of relief and rolls to the side. Wyoming turns to stare at him.  
“Hey,” he says on a gasp of air, “thought I’d drop by, see how you’re doing.”  
The bad joke is worth the startled chuckle.

After a while Wash starts to wonder why Wyoming always has a different joke when they inevitably reach the end and Wash has his hands buried in his guts. Everything else seems to follow some secret script that he’s started to learn to predict, though small changes occur from time to time. Wyoming is an anomaly he just can’t get a hold of, because everything else he says follows that same script.  
He curls over Wyoming’s bloodstained chest, stares into his face through the shattered visor, and tries to remember the first joke that started it all. He doesn’t think it ever ended.  
“Knock, Knock,” Wyoming starts, as he always does.  
Wash laughs and laughs.

He groans and rolls over in the dirt.  
When he pushes himself up on his elbows and looks up York is kneeling at his side. The rest of the team are hovering a few feet away, watching him worriedly. He wonders why for a moment, then realizes that there’s a reason he’s laying on the ground.  
“Wash? You okay?” York asks slowly.  
Another groan slips out and he gets up onto his knees. York steadies him with a hand on his shoulder when he sways. There’s a ringing in his ears that might or might not mean that his hearing has been damaged and a wetness on his lips that says his nose is definitely bleeding.  
“Define okay,” Wash says.  
His voice is nasally. His nose might be broken. He can’t quite tell.  
“He’s fine,” South decides.  
“Why,” Wash groans as York pulls him to his feet. He stumbles under his own weight and into York’s side. “Why do I have to move?”  
“Sorry, Wash,” Carolina says as she tugs him out of York’s arms, “Extraction can’t wait.”  
Once he has his balance he takes a couple of cautious steps. When he judges that he’s not about to fall flat on his face again he looks behind him. Glares accusingly at the tall building that’s half collapsed on itself from the explosion. It looks unassuming, like there’s no way it could be the source of all the suffering he’s been through.  
Someone laughs when he flips it off.

“Knock, knock,” Wash says.  
The others turn to stare. They’re all coated in mud and blood, bits of bio-foam peaking out of their armour and undersuits where serious injuries lay. Carolina is limping with York hovering worriedly at her side, his hand pressed to the bleeding wound on his hip. South is supporting North. They’re still two kilometres out from extraction. None of them are in any mood for jokes.  
Wash is grinning beneath his helmet. He feels giddy, on top of the world. Wyoming is a heavy weight against his back. For all that he’s shorter than Wash he’s much heavier. More muscle, Wash thinks.  
Wyoming asks cheerfully, “Who’s there?”  
“Legs,” says Wash.  
“Legs who?” asks Wyoming over the others’ groans.  
“Legs go home,” says Wash.


End file.
